De Blasio Is in Unfamiliar Territory in 2nd Run: Way Out Front

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More than a dozen unions have endorsed the mayor, including those representing teachers, retail workers, city employees and, on Tuesday, school principals at an event held by the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators union.CreditJeenah Moon for The New York Times

More than four years after officially announcing his mayoral run, Mayor Bill de Blasio seeks another term in a political environment that could not be more different.

In 2013, a packed Democratic field drew national attention as candidates sought to replace a three-term incumbent, Michael R. Bloomberg, and Mr. de Blasio catapulted himself from outsider to victor. Now Mayor de Blasio is the overwhelming favorite, his record and the power of incumbency warding off all but a few challengers.

There is good reason that many — especially on the Democratic side — have stayed away.

More than a dozen unions have endorsed the mayor, including those representing teachers, retail workers, city employees and school principals. A recent poll put his approval rating at the highest point of his administration. His ability to raise money, which appeared to flag in the face of state and federal investigations into his fund-raising activities during the last campaign and while he was in office, gained steam after prosecutors brought no charges.

With the process of petitioning to get on the city’s ballot having begun last week, the most energized challengers are in the Republican Party, where a primary battle is likely. But they face an uphill battle with the albatross of President Trump, overwhelmingly rejected by city voters in November, hanging around them.

All that puts Mr. de Blasio’s campaign staff in the position of playing defense more than offense for a candidate whose only liability may be himself — and a sense of inevitability.

His campaign manager, Rick Fromberg, is aware of the challenge. A veteran of Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for the White House — he was regional director for Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia — Mr. Fromberg, 37, said he had learned some valuable lessons that could be applied to Mr. de Blasio’s situation. He also ran the campaign of the Suffolk County executive, Steve Bellone, and has worked for City Hall on prekindergarten and public engagement under Mr. de Blasio.

“Plenty of candidates have gotten caught taking things for granted, and we’re just not going to do that,” he said. “We cannot sit there and pay attention to conventional wisdom and public polling. We have a really big job to do, and that is that we need to get people excited about what our candidate has done for them and is going to do for them.”

The mayor’s campaign has been ramping up its activities and increasing its staff, Mr. Walzak and Mr. Fromberg said. Eleven people were on the campaign’s staff as of Thursday, and more people are being hired to focus on digital outreach, enough so that they moved recently to a bigger space on Gold Street in Brooklyn.

The Dickensian message that propelled Mr. de Blasio into City Hall, of addressing inequality and ending the “tale of two cities,” has been updated to what his campaign hopes will be a unifying slogan for the incumbent mayor now more in the role of municipal booster: This is your city.

The theme shaped Mr. de Blasio’s State of the City address, in which he invoked the phrase several times as he recounted the various programs, policies and promises that had defined his term in office, including universal prekindergarten, public safety and affordable housing.

“It’s your city. You made it what it is; it’s our job to protect that,” Mr. de Blasio said in his February address. “It’s not something that belongs to those who happen to be most advantaged. It belongs to the people who made it great.”

“Turnout and motivating our base is a primary focus for us, no doubt about it,” Mr. Fromberg said. The campaign has a powerful tool drawn from its small-dollar fund-raising efforts: a list of more than 8,300 people who have given money, from $1 to $4,950, the maximum allowed.

In the Democratic primary, Mr. de Blasio is facing one candidate he bested last time around — Sal Albanese, a former city councilman who drew a little more than 5,800 votes in 2013 — and a first-time candidate, Robert Gangi, a criminal justice reform advocate.

Mr. Albanese has seized on an issue that could resonate with voters: the sorry state of the city’s transit system, which is run by the state. Mr. Albanese has been riding the subway regularly and posting on Twitter of his delays, a steady stream of Everyman outrage at subway service problems. (Mr. de Blasio has not been a regular subway rider as mayor.)

But for either Mr. Albanese or Mr. Gangi to compete, he will have to raise enough money to qualify for the city’s matching program, and each remains far from the fund-raising threshold.

A more robust contest is set to take place on the Republican side between Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, who represents parts of Staten Island and Brooklyn, and Paul J. Massey Jr., a millionaire real estate sales executive.

But whoever prevails, Mr. de Blasio’s campaign will not hesitate to invoke the specter of Mr. Trump, who remains deeply unpopular in his hometown, New York.

“The people of New York City are worried to concerned about the impact of Trump,” Mr. Walzak said. “We are going to be talking about Trump. But it’s always going to be through the prism of how it impacts individual New Yorkers.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: De Blasio Is the Clear Favorite, but His Campaign Staff Doesn’t Want to Hear It. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe